Day One

When I arrived with my co-pilots from Hagerty Insurance to pick up the cars from a Phoenix parking lot, the 1973 Jensen Interceptor was immobile. As in “windows open with dead battery” immobile. The 1977 Datsun 280Z was filled with spiderwebs, but at least it started easily. I should have taken it as a sign that this would not be the just-challenging-enough-to-be-fun trip that I had been expecting.

I had been assured that both cars had been thoroughly inspected and freshened prior to the trip. In fact, the owner of both cars has $1,500 in receipts to prove it. The fact is that neither could possibly have been inspected, and one seems to have been intentionally sabotaged by the shop.

The word “sabotaged” is not being used lightly here: Some of the things this shop did go beyond the usual shade-tree incompetence and approach actionable negligence. What follows is less a travelogue and more a catalog of ailments suffered by each car and the means by which they were resolved--where applicable.

Day Two

As mentioned, the Interceptor failed to start when we picked it up. A new battery was sourced and installed, which got us as far as the gas station at the end of the block. Upon stopping the car, the starter motor would not engage. After some hemming and hawing--and a brief discussion with the Hagerty concierge, Davin Reckow--I bypassed the starter solenoid with a pair of jumper cables and the car started.

The solenoid was similar to the one found on the firewall of an old Ford, so we were able to replace it at AutoZone. However, for the remainder of our trip from Phoenix to Flagstaff, the Jensen was started by bypassing the failed solenoid.

Shortly after getting back under way, we unwisely tried the Jensen's air-conditioning system. A poof of white smoke rolled out from the hood, and we were stopped again. I disconnected the A/C and we were under way.

Within 15 minutes, the crew in the Z was reporting overheating issues. The car's driver, Jonathan Stein--also executive editor of Hagerty's Collector Cars magazine--began removing the thermostat housing and we pulled the thermostat. When we reinstalled the housing, the gasket looked questionable. It was, and it gave out about 20 miles down the road. We were stranded again, still in metro Phoenix.

We sent one member of our contingent out for Permatex gasket maker and took the thermostat housing apart while we waited. By the time the Permatex arrived, it was 10 p.m. local time and midnight for me and my colleagues. We made a gasket out of some spare gasket material that was left in the Jensen, globbed on the gasket maker and bolted the housing back together. It worked. There was a pinhole leak, but it held water.

As the light of the city faded behind us both cars were running, and the Jensen was finally in its element. The burly V8 made it possible to overlook the car's many flaws for the first time.

It's no cream puff, this Interceptor. The steering wheel is covered in that ancient steering wheel schmutz of dead skin and oils, and it transfers to the driver's hands and the legs of his pants. The interior as a whole is nice to look at, as long as you don't look too close. Just like in the engine compartment, there are plenty of botched repairs and ill-advised modifications in the cabin. But on the gently curving highway leading over a mountain and on to Flagstaff, the Interceptor absolutely roared.

The Z was being driven extremely cautiously, at what the driver thought was 45 mph to 50 mph. We later found out that the speedometer is about 10 mph slow. In the Interceptor, we left the Datsun and our chase car behind and arrived at the hotel nearly an hour and a half ahead of them.

Day Three

After a morning spent replacing the Interceptor's starter solenoid and fixing a cooling fan that had been running constantly and draining the battery, we shuffled out of the hotel parking lot. I had also tried--without success--to adjust the hood which was so poorly aligned that it would it not shut completely. We had lost a good deal of paint as the unlatched hood bounced and jostled over the uneven Arizona tarmac.

As we left the hotel, I was driving the Z with photographer Ignacio Salas-Humar in the passenger seat. Ignacio noticed that the passenger-side rear wheel of the Jensen was wobbling badly. We figured it had lost a few lug nuts, so we pulled the convoy over into a gas station. The lug nuts were OK, so I spent about five minutes cobbling together enough jack parts from the Datsun and the Jensen to lift the old English machine off the ground.

When I removed the wheel, I found the source of the wobble, and what I believe to be an example of some spectacularly bad mechanical work on the part of the shop that inspected/sabotaged the car. There was a thick brass washer hanging loosely off of one of the wheel studs so that with the wheel on, it sat between the wheel and the hub. Removing the washer fixed the wobbling issue, and we were back on the road.

Despite stopping at scores of semifamous roadside tourist traps, we made Gallup, N.M., just after nightfall. Applebee's was the only restaurant that was still serving beer when we arrived, so we had some microwaved dinner there. After dinner, but before the resulting sodium hangover, I retired to the Jack Carson room at the El Rancho Hotel/Motel.

Do not be fooled by the signage above the El Rancho's doors. It may read “The Charm of Yesterday, the Convenience of Tomorrow,” but without Internet service or three-pronged electrical outlets in the room, the sign had to have been installed sometime before 1970. Perhaps hotel owners really meant “the convenience of being able to get some work done tomorrow.”

The hotel is clean, however, and the staff was kind. If you simply must stay in a room that was once the temporary home of an old-timey Hollywood actor or you want to revel in the pre-disco-era kitsch of the Route 66 experience, you could do worse.

POSTSCRIPT

Because of the kitsch-gazing stops and numerous, interminable roadside repair sessions, we were behind schedule. So we woke up early and got on the road to Albuquerque, N.M., where the Hagerty people are--as of this writing--interviewing someone, “for journalism.” I, on the other hand, am stuck at a gas station with Jonathan Stein and the intrepid Ignacio Salas-Humar.

With Mr. Stein behind the wheel trying to make time, the Datsun was allowed to run below one-eighth of a tank of gas. The fuel pump consequently Hoovered up some of the rust that had come loose in the tank, and the Datsun was toast. We refilled the tank with fresh gas, but it cranked and cranked without catching. “No problem,” I thought, “I'll just removed the fuel injectors, clean them with a solvent of some kind and blow them out, with my mouth.”

Though I did learn what gasoline, PB Blaster and starter fluid taste like, and I did successfully clean the injectors, I left off a crucial part and could not reassemble the damned injector assembly because of a screw that was stripped by a previous tinkerer.

I swear it was the last guy, not me.

So, the current status of the Route 66 Relocation Road Rally is . . . stopped. At a gas station in Blue Water, N.M. We don't have the tools to extract that stripped screw, and the engine won't run until we put the injectors together correctly. It's tow-truck time. In two and a half days, we have covered 331 miles.

The tow truck rescuing the Datsun 280Z has also broken down.

Rory Carroll
- Rory Carroll is a graduate of Michigan State University, a concours d’elegance and vintage-racing hanger-on and a past winner of the Index of Effluency Trophy at the 24 Hours of LeMons.
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